It is imperative to know how violent material is perceived when presented over various media platforms and how acceptable these violent acts are in video games with different ESRB ratings. With the current debate surrounding the relationship between video games and violence, it is important to understand perception of violence in different media and acceptability of violent acts in video games of different ratings. This will allow a more accurate discussion on the impact of violent acts in video games as compared to other media which will help determine how to best proceed in eliminating causal factors of violence as well as influencing the production of new video games. It was expected that violent acts would be perceived as most violent in news, followed by movies, and least violent in video games. It was also expected that more violent acts would be seen as acceptable in video games rated mature rather than teen. Participants were gathered at University of Maryland from two classes and SONA. They were administered a survey to determine their video game usage and demographic information. Perception of violence in the news, movies, and video games was measured using a 9-point Likert Scale that ranged from 1-”harmless” to 9“horrifying.” Acceptability was measured by asking if particular violent acts were viewed as acceptable for teen ratings or mature ratings in video games. These acts ranged from mostly harmless to extremely brutal. In general, news was perceived as the most violent followed by movies then video games. The mean perceived violence in Video Games was 4.74 (SD=1.64), in Movies 5.05 (SD=1.68), and in News media 5.77 (SD=1.67). As expected, violent acts were better tolerated in games rated mature than games rated teen. The mean number of acts judged "unacceptable" (not marked as unacceptable) for Teen was 19.31 and for Mature it was only 8.81 (p<.001).

The purpose of the present study is fourfold: (1) to investigate the predicted relationships between self-acceptance and acceptance of others, (2) to investigate self-acceptance, acceptance of others, and their interrelationship with acceptance by others, (3) to investigate the patterns of interrelationship between self-acceptance, acceptance of others, actual acceptability to others, and predicted acceptability to others, and (4) to investigate an hypothesized curvilinear relationship between self-acceptance and acceptance of others.